1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method of creating and recording an image file and an information recording system, and more particularly to a method of creating an image file to be additionally written in an information recording medium, a method of additionally writing such an image file in an information recording medium, an information recording system having an information recording device and an information processing device, and an information recording medium for storing a program for such an information recording system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recent technological advances in personal computers (PC) makes it possible to process audio-visual information such as audio information and video information. In general, such audio-visual information includes an enormous amount of data. Thus, there is an increasing interest in CD (Compact Disc) and DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) as high-capacity information recording media for storing audio-visual information. In addition, as optical disk devices become more affordable, the optical disk devices have been more widely used as information recording devices to record information in optical disks.
For example, when user data are recorded in CD-R (CD-Recordable), installed mastering application software (hereinafter which is referred to as “writer software”) is used in general. Conventionally such writer software temporarily creates image data including user data and directory information thereof in a hard disk, and then records the created image data in CD-R. In this case, after recording the image data in CD-R, the image data are automatically deleted from the hard disk.
A conventional multisession recording approach, which is one of recording technologies for CD-R, allows information to be additionally written per session. For example, in order to additionally write user data in CD-R containing at least one session, conventional writer software executes the following steps:                1. Read file management information having session volume information recorded in a predetermined area in target CD-R and logical structure information on file data;        2. Attach file information on the target user data, which will be additionally written, to the file management information to establish links between the target user data and existing recorded data;        3. Create image data having updated file management information and the target data in a hard disk;        4. Additionally write the created image data in CD-R; and        5. Delete the image data from the hard disk.        
In recent years, writer software that can create an image file from image data (hereinafter which is referred to as a “filing function”) and then store the created image file in a hard disk has been available. For example, if a user created an image file from image data and stored the image file in a hard disk before, the user can use such writer software to record the image file on CD-R later.
However, such conventional filing function can record data in only a blank disk. In other words, conventional writer software cannot additionally write data in a non-blank disk. As mentioned above, if image data are multisession recorded, the image data includes file management information. Thus, when the image data are additionally written in another CD-R different from CD-R used in image data creation, logical consistency between the image data and existing data in the different CD-R can fail. As a result, there is a risk that some problems may be caused. For example, although CD-R includes the image data, the image data cannot be accessed. Also, when a user attempts to access the image data, the system is crashed.